<p>Complex and important topic. There are many studies showing that the number of words spoken to children correspond to their vocabularies (e.g, Hart and Risley; research at Stanford by Anne Fernald, etc). But, the dynamics are more complicated than that… there are also individual differences in children’s capacity to attend to words and to learn language as well as their rate of vocabulary development (expressive and receptive). </p>
<p>Cultural differences may also exist as to the ways in which children are expected to learn (Barbara Rogoff’s research on Mayan culture and the expectation that children watch and learn from adults (e.g., imitative, attentive learning versus verbally interactive)). There are cultures where the conversations with children take place when children are playing with groups of children of different ages as well as through their exposure to adults in varying roles in their lives (neighbors, godparents, aunts, uncles, grandparents,etc), in addition to or instead of primarily through interaction with their parents. However, in the U.S., we have less of a collective approach to child rearing and many families with children are relatively isolated when one considers how many people through the course of a day or week a child in regular face-to-face contact with a given family. So, here, how much an individual parent talks and responds to an individual child may well be key. And, research studies that divvy up the parents by words spoken, do see this; however, more educated parents do tend to talk to their children more in general, given that school teaches us to use our verbal reasoning. </p>
<p>Further, work and school in the 21st century are heavily skewed toward verbal learning, and children who start school 2 years behind the norm in their vocabulary and language understanding will have a hard time catching up. Children’s vocabularies in kindergarten correlate to their ease in learning to read as well as to their achievement in later grades. If we know that certain populations are at risk for this type of early delay, do we prefer to intervene early or decry high-school drop out rates when late remediation has not worked? </p>
<p>I also grew up in my early years in poverty, but my parents were both talkers and readers… Another key element to children’s development relates to the effects of unbuffered,toxic stress in childhood, affecting everything from emotional regulation to attention to asthma rates to proximal and distal health effects. Obviously, impaired attention can also affect language learning. Parents under extreme stress may also be less likely to chat about the world around them and delimit communications to commands. Some of the research in this area posits that it is the extra words that soften and add the love, as well as present different concepts to children, but that there are a certain number of commands that are almost universally used in managing lifee with young children. “Sit down.” Versus, “Sit down. It isn’t safe to stand on the shopping cart. Why don’t we sit your teddy down next to you?” So, what can we all do to buffer the stress experienced by young and expecting families and to help them provide more emotional and language nurturing going forward?</p>